


Haunted

by rahleeyah



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:21:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29788422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rahleeyah/pseuds/rahleeyah
Summary: AU: The marking appears when you turn eighteen, every cut, every scrape, every bruise echoed on the body of your soulmate in a thin silver line. An echo, binding one heart to another. It's supposed to be a joyful thing, but for Elliot and Olivia, it spells the beginning of a journey neither of them could ever have imagined.
Relationships: Olivia Benson/Elliot Stabler
Comments: 28
Kudos: 42





	1. Chapter 1

I.

He's seventeen when Kathy tells him, sobbing, that she's pregnant. It scares the shit out of him; he's just a kid, and he loves Kathy, of course he does, but _shit._ What is he supposed to do? He's got a shit job, just bumming around waiting for Kathy to finish high school, waiting for some sign of what he ought to do with his life. This is it, he figures. This is the sign. His old man's been on his case for years; _be a man, do something with your life, stand up._ There's no doubt in his mind what he'll do now; the old man was a Marine, fought for his country and provided for his family. Kathy is his family now. They are bound together, by this little peanut-sized thing that's about to change both their lives. He'll marry her, he'll join up, he'll work hard and keep his family fed. He'll be a man, and his old man can choke on it.

It doesn't bother him that he hasn't seen the marks yet. The marks don't start until you're eighteen, anyway; there's no doubt in his mind that the marks will turn up, eventually. It's gotta be Kathy; it's always been Kathy. From the first time he saw her, when they were kids in the same confirmation class, he's been in love with her, and he knows that love is real, knows it with all the conviction of youth. The church says the marking is a sacrament, evidence of the love between two people, God's love on earth. But that's why the church says sex is for marriage. You're supposed to wait for the marking, get married, have sex, have babies, in that order. If you choose to play it fast and loose, that's a sin. If you knock a girl up, you marry her, and if you marry her, you stay married. That's it, forever, whatever the marking says; you've sworn your vows in front of God, and you've gotta make your peace with it.

The marks don't mean a whole hell of a lot to him, if he's being honest. He's seen them on his parents; the old man cuts the back of his hand, a big, heavy red welt from the engine he was working on, and a silver mark, the same shape and size, turns up on his mother's hand. They're meant for each other, but the old man is a mean bastard with a sharp tongue and a heavy hand. The marks have bound his mother to a monster; maybe, he thinks, they'd all be better off with no marks at all. Might make things easier.

He tells Kathy he loves her and buys a cheap diamond with a monthly payment that's gonna kill him, and two days after the wedding he joins the Marines.

II.

Maureen's two when Kathy tells him she's pregnant for the second time. It couldn't come at a worse moment; they're living in a shitty house on base and he's about to get shipped overseas for the first time. On top of that, there is a quiet, simmering terror that fills them both, a terror neither of them is willing to face. Basic training and everything he's been through in the last two years has left him bruised and bloody more times than he can count, but not one single bruise, not one cut, not one scrape has showed up on Kathy's skin. She's more careful than he is, but she burns her hand on the stove, gets a papercut shuffling through the bills, and no mark turns up on him, either.

It doesn't take a priest to tell him what it means. He fucked the wrong girl and knocked her up, and now they're stuck. Only he doesn't feel stuck, not exactly; it's hard to explain. The job is tough and he can't get ahead on the bills and sometimes he feels like he's drowning, but _Christ,_ he loves his girls. Kathy and little Mo, they're everything to him. He'd kill for them, die for them, no questions asked. When he rolls Kathy beneath him in that creaky old bed he feels like he's come home, and when he swings Maureen up into the air and listens to her giggling, he thinks he's the luckiest bastard alive.

 _What do the fucking marks know, anyway?_ He tells Kathy in a rare moment of candor. She's crying, again; pregnancy makes her emotions unpredictable, and she's not even twenty yet, scared out of her mind that she's ruined her whole life already. _I love you,_ he whispers to her, fiercely, full of devotion. _And I'm always gonna love you, Kath._

 _But what's gonna happen when you meet her?_ Kathy asks in a ragged voice, and his heart sinks like a stone in his gut, because he's wondering the same thing. The absence of the marking is undeniable; Kathy isn't his soulmate. But he isn't hers, either. There may be a woman waiting out there for him - maybe not, some people never get marked - but there may be a man out there for Kathy, too. A man she hasn't met yet, a man she'll love more than him. Rage bubbles up in his gut, and he holds her closer. The future is a great big question mark hanging over his head. What's going to happen to them? Who are they going to meet, who could change their lives so completely, who could tear him away from this girl he loves more than his own life? Who could take her from him? _I'll kill the bastard,_ he thinks, and then wonders if he's too much like his old man, too selfish, too bitter, or too much like his mother, unpredictable and just as dangerous.

 _Nothing's gonna happen,_ he tells her. ' _Cause you're my girl. And always will be._

III.

Olivia hates the marks. All her life, they've been the subject of movies and romance novels, whispered about by the other girls in her class - girls she never talks to, because if she gets too close to someone they might find out, find out where she came from, find out that her mom drinks too much, find out that she lives in a shithole and cleans up empty bottles in the mornings before school while her mother lingers, passed out on the couch. There's a part of her heart, a small, girlish, tender thing, that dreams about it. A silver mark appearing, finding its corresponding echo on the arm of a boy with a beautiful smile, getting swept away by the one person who'll know her, love her, better than anyone else. The one person who'll save her from the life she's known so far.

 _Yeah, right,_ the rest of her thinks. There's never been any mark on her mother - the subject of many drunken rantings - and so Olivia knows better than most that some people don't get so lucky. Some people just stay alone, forever, bitter and sad. Like Serena. Like Olivia's been her whole life.

At eighteen she takes off, leaves the city for Siena College and small town life. She goes drinking with friends, scrapes her leg on an errant fence as they jump it crossing the railroad tracks, and feels only a little disappointed when there's no mark on her date's leg. She didn't think he was the one, and now she knows it, but she sleeps with him anyway. He's a nice boy, and it's nice to be wanted. And besides, she thinks later, she's eighteen now. If her soulmate has already turned eighteen, too, he'll see it. He'll see it, and he'll know she exists, know that there's a girl out there, waiting for him. Maybe it'll make him smile. She hopes it does.

IV.

The mark hits him for the first time while he's overseas. Stuck in some fucking hellhole in the desert he wakes up one morning to find a long silver line running up his calf. It's narrow, like maybe she got caught on a fence or something - he hopes that's all it is. But he runs his hand over it, and he feels like he's gonna vomit, whether from hope or from devastation he can't tell. There is a girl, out there somewhere, a girl for him. A girl who's not Kathy. He writes to his wife about it, a small piece of him hoping maybe it's still her somehow, and he gets his response eventually; no, she never cut her leg. They both know what it means. Someone else did. Some other girl. _His_ girl. It feels like someone's just pulled the pin on the grenade, like he's left holding it and counting down the seconds. She's out there, somewhere, the girl he's meant to be with, the other half of his soul. One day he'll meet her, and she'll shake the very foundations of his life, and he'll never be able to love her like she needs, because he's got Kathy and two babies at home, and he's gotta be a man. He's gotta do the right thing by one woman and break another's heart. _What a fucking trainwreck,_ he thinks.

She must have just turned eighteen, his mystery girl. That's the only reason, he thinks, for the marks to have taken so long to turn up. All these years, he's just been biding his time, waiting on her, and now she's here, and his married with two kids. _Christ,_ he thinks, if they'd only waited, if he'd just done what the priest said, if he hadn't been so head-over-heels for Kathy, if he hadn't been so stubborn, so sure that he was right, maybe...maybe he could have stopped it. Maybe he could have been free to find his girl, and Kathy could have been free to find someone else, and maybe he wouldn't be out here dodging bullets in the fucking desert, feeling like a miserable piece of shit.

It's too late for _maybes_ , though. He's got a job to do, and a promise to keep, and he'll never let Kathy down. She deserves better.

V.

The first time Olivia sees the mark, it scares her so bad she cries. It's nothing like she thought it would be. She thought that when she saw it she'd be happy, that it would be a relief, to know that someone loves her, could love her, to know she isn't destined to end up just like her mother, miserable and alone. Only when she imagined it, she thought it would be something small, something simple, something she could show off to her friends. This is anything but.

This is a nightmare. The mark covers the right side of her body, from tits to hips. It's silvery, jagged, in pieces, like... _like he went through a chipper,_ she thinks, and shudders. He's not dead, she knows, because when one soulmate dies their marks disappear from their partner, forever. Everybody knows that. But this, this must have hurt him like hell, and she can't imagine what could cause damage like that. A car accident, maybe? Or maybe he's in construction, or works with heavy machinery, or something. It's hard to tell, and she's left terrified. Worried he won't make it through, worried the marks will fade, worried they won't. Worried about what sort of man could get himself hurt this bad, and what life with him might be like. Worried she won't meet him before it's too late. Worried she will, and she won't like what she finds. He's supposed to be the other half of her soul, but half her genes came from a bitter drunk and half came from a violent rapist. She doesn't know yet what _she_ is, not in full, but she knows where she came from. And if this mystery man is half of her, she wonders which half, and worries.

VI.

He's being an asshole and he knows it, but somehow, he just doesn't care. He's back stateside, and things are good with Kathy - mostly. Their daughters are growing like weeds and the pay's getting better as he moves up the ranks and this house doesn't have roaches. There's still a few faint scars on his right side, just above his hip, from where he got caught in an IED explosion, and Kathy won't touch them when he makes love to her. It was a lucky thing; he got burned and sliced up a bit, but it wasn't too bad, wasn't near as bad as some of the other boys got, and his scars aren't as dark as they could be. But they're a reminder, everyday, that he got caught in an explosion and unlike the other wives Kathy didn't know until the Corps told her, because she doesn't have his mark. Some other girl saw his mark, knew the second it happened, and Kathy had to wait for a phone call. It stings, still.

But he's out having drinks with a couple of guys from the unit and they have a few too many and the talk turns to tattoos. It's not common, people getting tats; a man gets some ink and he'll wear it until the day he dies, but his soulmate will, too. Most girls don't like the thought of walking around with a permanent silver echo of their man's tattoos without at least being consulted on it first. Most of the time, Elliot knows if he sees a man with a tat either the guy's wife has died, or he never had one in the first place, and never will. It's othering, in a way. A tattoo says _love won't mark me, so I'll mark myself._

He knows, he _knows,_ if he gets one, she'll see it. It'll be on her, forever. If she goes home with some guy, the minute she gets undressed he'll see the faint silver lines and he'll know he's fucking someone else's girl. Elliot knows he shouldn't like that, but he does. Maybe that makes him possessive, but she is _his,_ and he wants the world to know it. Wants her to know it. Elliot knows it isn't fair - he's made his promises to Kathy and he'll never leave her, not even for the other half of his soul. It isn't fair to bind this girl to him forever, when he has no intention of claiming her for himself.

But he's drunk, and he wants her. He wants to know who she is, what she looks like, what's so special about her that he's supposed to love her more than his wife, the mother of his children, the girl he's been in love for as long as he can remember. He tries to imagine loving someone more than Kathy, and he wants to puke, because he thinks if he ever feels that much his heart will burst trying to keep it all inside. But he wants her to know that he's here, too - she already does, he knows, because he's been beat all to hell over the last few years and she'll have seen every mark - but he wants to reach across the distance that separates them, grab her by the arms, and tell her _I'm here. Don't you forget about me. I want you to know me when you see me._

So he and the boys go stumbling into the night and find a shady backhole tattoo shop willing to ink him even when he's drunk, and he gets a great big fucking tat, right there on his forearm, in a place it'll be impossible for her to hide all the time. In the winter she'll be all right, but in the summer she'll slip out of her long sleeves and he'll be right there with her, etched in silvery lines on her skin. The tat is almost finished when he asks the man to add _semper fi_ underneath it. It goes with the rest of the piece, the Marine Corps symbol etched in his arm, but he does it for _her_ , too. _Always faithful._ He wants her to know, he's made his choice. He'll always be faithful. Just not to her.

When he gets home and Kathy sees the tattoo her face turns red with rage, and she doesn't speak to him for a week.

VII.

 _The nerve of this asshole,_ Olivia thinks every time she looks at her arm. It's an answer, in one way; she knows now why he gets hurt so much, so bad. He's a Marine. But he's a son of a bitch, too, because he had to know that when he got his big tattoo he was marking her up for her life. When it comes she'd been dating a nice boy for a few months, and they hadn't either of them been hurt enough for a mark yet, and she was thinking _maybe,_ but then that tattoo shows up, and the nice boy disappears. It's not his, and he knows that means she's not, either, and he doesn't want to waste his time on her. Not that she can blame him.

She can, however, blame this asshole. She has no idea who he is - she doesn't think she's ever met a Marine in her life, and if he's still serving he's probably not anywhere near Loudonville, anyway. But that means he doesn't know who _she_ is, either, and now he's gone and marked her. It's inconsiderate, she thinks, just plain selfish. Either he doesn't give a shit about her, or he wants to claim her, and either way it makes him a dick.

Two weeks later she works up her nerve, and goes with her best friend on campus to a brightly lit tattoo parlor the next town over. _Two can play at this game,_ she thinks.

VIII.

If he thought Kathy was mad when she saw his tat, it's nothing compared to angry she gets when, two weeks later, a pretty silver butterfly turns up on his left hip. He laughs out loud when he sees it, shocked and impressed; this girl, whoever she is, she's got balls. He marked her for life and she marked him right back, branded him just the same way he did her. Just like he knew any prospective boyfriends of hers will see his mark on her arm, she knew any girls he was with would see hers on him. And hers isn't some innocuous thing; it's dainty and feminine and undeniable. It's as girly, he thinks, as his tat is manly. What a pair they make.

Kathy doesn't laugh.

 _You think this is funny?_ She spits out at him. _You're playing stupid games with some girl and I'm just supposed to watch?_

Years later, he'll think that's it. That's the moment they should have called it quits. They've got two kids but they're tearing apart at the seams, and it's all his fault. He wanted to talk to his girl more than he wanted to keep his wife happy, and she knows it, will see it every time he slides his boxers down off his hips. This girl, his soulmate, will be in bed with them for the rest of their lives. And he brought her there.

 _I love you, Kath,_ he tells her. _I'm sorry._

She storms out of the room, and he gets the silent treatment for another week. After that, he's careful to try to hide the mark from her, to try to keep from drawing attention to this wall that's been built up between them, but in quiet moments, just before he gets in the shower or just as he's stepping out of it, he runs his fingertips over that little butterfly, and he smiles, thinking of her. This girl out there, who's bold as brass, who's tough enough to challenge him, this girl who wants him bad enough to mark him for good. The smile always fades, though, because then he remembers. Remembers he can't ever touch her, can't ever love her, that to let her into his heart would be to push Kathy out of it, and that's something he can't ever do. He loves his wife, and his daughters, and this butterfly girl, whoever she is, she can't hold a candle to them.

Can she?


	2. Chapter 2

I.

It's raining the day Olivia Benson meets Elliot Stabler. He shakes her hand with a wolfish grin she likes more than she knows she should, but in addition to a firm handshake and a broad set of shoulders he's also sporting a wedding ring, and that reassures her somewhat. Whatever sort of man he might be - and she doesn't know, yet, although she's heard rumors about his anger management issues - she certainly isn't that type of girl. A wedding ring means she's safe, no matter how handsome he is. Growing up without a family, islanded alone in her apartment with no one but her drunk mother to keep her company, has made Olivia fiercely protective of other people's families. She knows what it is to go without, and she won't break up a happy home.

And besides, there's the matter of her soulmate to consider. She's thirty and she's sure she hasn't met him yet, but she knows he's out there, somewhere. The tattoos remind her every day, because even if he hasn't hurt himself recently, even if all the other marks have faded, those silver monstrosities stay with her. They're like ghosts, faded remnants of this man who haunts her dreams, occupies her mind in idle moments. Most of the time she keeps her jacket on - she feels braver in a suit, anyway - but if the occasion calls for short sleeves, or less, she cakes the makeup on to cover the Marine Corps symbol on her forearm, the massive crucifix on her bicep. The echo of those tattoos isn't dark like the real thing; they're all thin silver lines, easy enough to cover. She wears more makeup on her arms than she does on her face, and she wonders about him, the man she thinks of fondly as _the asshole._ Where he is, what he's doing, why he felt the need to saddle her with another tattoo. The first one was a branding; what was the second? She hates the crucifix, more than the other. Religion has never been important to her but it clearly matters to him, and that makes her wonder how they could possibly get along when they disagree on something so fundamental.

On day one of their partnership she finds out Stabler's a Catholic, and she laughs, because of course he is.

II.

It's raining the day Elliot Stabler meets Olivia Benson, the day he holds an umbrella over their heads with one hand and reaches for her with the other. The first time he sees her he's gotta do a double take; scuttlebutt is that Benson's a looker, but he isn't prepared for this, somehow. She's not just pretty, she's turn-around-to-get-a-second-look gorgeous. A real stunner. But the first words out of her mouth are a challenge, and he can see right off the bat he's got trouble on his hands. She's a few years younger than him and eager to prove herself, and he can tell already she's gonna believe every victim, no questions. It's not the same for him; he's been at SVU long enough to become a little jaded, a little wary. _Fool me once,_ and all that.

It doesn't matter that she's pretty, he decides. He's got enough women in his life; between his wife and their three daughters, he's up to his pits in estrogen, and he and Dickie escape to the basketball court as often as they can just to catch a break. There's the butterfly girl, too, but he tries not to think of her too often. Some days he can't help it; some nights she hangs in the air above his marital bed like a ghost, and her mark on his skin haunts him, taunts him every time as he catches sight of it. As far he knows he hasn't met her yet - there's never been a woman who's caught his eye, made him even think of straying from Kathy, and it's been twelve years since he first got marked. He's starting to think he'll never meet her, that she'll never be more than a tattoo on his hip and the occasional mark on his hand. There's a part of him that wants that, prays that he'll never meet her, that he's dodged that bullet and he can keep his vows to Kathy without any trouble. There's a part of him that aches for her, though, and he can never tell which one is going to win that battle inside him.

Not that it matters. Benson's his partner, and her mouth is too smart for him. He hopes butterfly girl is nicer than she is.

III.

The first time Olivia catches sight of Elliot's tattoo they've only been working together a week. The rain's given way to sunshine and it's warm in the bullpen and he's got his jacket thrown across the back of his chair and she's wishing she could do the same when he rolls his sleeve back, and her heart drops. His hands are moving, and it's hard to get a good look, but she's been carrying the tattoo on her arm for years, and she knows what it looks like. It looks like his, the Marine Corps symbol with _Semper Fi_ written under it. Only hers is silvery and faded, and his is thick and black.

 _You a Marine?_ she asks, nodding to his arm when he catches her eye, and there's that grin again, the one she already looks forward to more than she should.

 _Was,_ he says. _You caught that quick. Was your old man in the Corps?_

Something twists inside Olivia's gut. She's not told him yet, although she knows she should, knows she's gonna have to, knows it's better to get it out now that have it come out in the heat of the moment, dealing with some poor girl in the same position Serena was once in herself. It's only been a week; Olivia doesn't know yet how she'll react when the inevitable happens, and she thinks it'll help if her partner already knows, if he's prepared. But it makes her feel weak, somehow, to admit the real reason she's fought so hard to get transferred to SVU. It's a vulnerability; what if they say she's got a conflict of interest, that she's too wounded to do this job? It's only been a week, but she already knows this is right where she needs to be, and she doesn't want to lose it.

 _I have no idea,_ she says, and that shuts him up quick.

It doesn't matter, she decides, that he's got the same tattoo. There's probably hundreds, thousands of men out there with that symbol etched on their skin, and besides, he's married. He's wild about his wife and kids, won't shut up about them, got pictures taped up all over the inside of his locker. That wife of his, she's _his,_ his soulmate, and that's the way it's supposed to be. Stabler's just her partner. And he's too aggressive for her tastes, she thinks. She likes a man who's got enough balls to ask her out first, but she doesn't like one who needs to be in control all the time, like Stabler does.

 _We'd rip each other to pieces,_ she thinks, and smiles, and goes back to work.

IV.

It's a papercut, in the end. A stupid fucking papercut that changes Elliot's whole life.

They've been partners for six months and she's growing on him, Benson. Yeah, she's got a smart mouth and yeah, she likes to fight him, but there's something about it, fighting with her, something that's almost fun. Fighting with Kathy always feels like a punch to the gut, like every time he disagrees with her he's just reminding her that she gave her whole life to the wrong man. With Benson it's different; they can argue, butt heads, call each other names, but at the end of the day it makes them both better. They're both learning to see things through each other's eyes, and perspective is what separates a good detective from a useless one.

They're stuck at their desks, held up at the last minute by Cragen insisting on a revision to their reports. Benson's dressed up to go out on a date - she hasn't said but he thinks she hasn't found her soulmate yet based on the rate she goes through men, and he wishes it didn't make him jealous, seeing her in a gorgeous dress, all dolled up for another asshole whose number she'll lose in a week's time - and he's trying not to look at her tits in that tight dress when he hears her swear.

He looks up and she's sucking at her thumb, and he wishes she wouldn't _do_ that; he's only a man, after all, and she's gorgeous, and the movement draws his attention to her lips. But she's his partner, and day by day it gets a little easier. He doesn't forget what she looks like, exactly, but she's _Benson,_ now, just another one of the guys, his _partner._ When she's dressed up like this he sometimes forgets that, and he's about to look away when she explains herself.

 _Papercut,_ she says, drawing her thumb out of her mouth and checking it for any residual blood. Idly he wonders what that's about, that instinctual drive to clean a wound with your lips that he thinks everybody must feel, but then he turns his attention back to his keyboard, and his heart stops.

There's a thin silver mark across the pad of his thumb that definitely wasn't there a few minutes ago. It's a _mark_ , he's had enough of them over the years to know what they look like. It's a mark in the same place Benson got cut, at the same time.

 _Lemme see,_ he says, rising out of his chair and rushing to her, taking her hand in his, hoping this looks like over-protective posturing, and not the unraveling of his whole world. He only gets a second to look before she's snatching her hand back, calling him a _mother hen_ , but it's enough. It's the same damn mark.

He sits back in his chair and doesn't say a word, doesn't move, barely even breathes until she's finished with her report and sashaying away from him. He tells her to have a good night, but the words come out choked; she shoots him a strange look but doesn't question it. The second she's gone he heaves himself out of his chair, runs to the locker room, and pukes.

 _Shit._ that's the only thought in his head, a mantra repeated over and over. _Shit. Shit. Shit._

Benson's the girl with the butterfly tattoo - _don't think about her hips, don't be an asshole -_ Benson's the girl who was meant for him. The other half of his soul, his heart made flesh. _Benson_ is the girl he's supposed to love more than his wife.

He's so royally fucked.

In a way he can see it. She's the prettiest woman he's ever seen up close, and if they'd met under different circumstances he thinks the sway of her hips and the swell of her ass and those big dark eyes might have made him fall apart. But circumstances aren't different; he's trapped. He's made his promises to Kathy, and Benson is his _partner._ It's bad enough he's never gonna love her, never gonna be there for her, never gonna give her the fairytale happy ending he already knows she wants. This job means everything to her, and he doesn't want to fuck that up for her, too. There's no money to hire another detective in the squad, let alone two; he can't ask for a change without one of them leaving. It won't be him, but he can't do that to her.

_Shit._

A tiny, selfish voice whispers to him in the darkness behind his closed eyelids. This is the only way he'll get to know her, his butterfly girl. This is the only way she'll ever be in his life. All he can ever have of her is the time they spend working together. Can he really give that up? What would it be like, he wonders, to let this unfold, to find out what's so special about her that she's gotten under his skin? It's Kathy he'll go home to; it's always been Kathy. Olivia can have his days, and Kathy can have his nights, and maybe, he thinks, it'll be ok. Maybe he can have it all.

As long as Olivia never finds out.

V.

They've been partners for a year when the truth finally hits her, and really, she thinks, she should have seen this coming.

Maybe there were signs she missed. Maybe she _did_ see it, and just wouldn't let herself acknowledge it. She's been shrugging off that damn tattoo of his - and hiding hers from him - for a full year; it's not impossible she ignored other signs.

But this day, this day it all comes tumbling down, because she and Elliot both got banged up bringing in a perp, and they're in the locker rooms together. Her jacket's ruined, and she'll need the fresh one from her locker, and his shirt got torn in the scuffle. It's the first time he's taken off his shirt in front of her, but they're in too much of a hurry - and they know each other too well, at this point - to worry much about propriety. He slips his shirt off and her hands stutter on her jacket, because there on his bicep is a massive fucking crucifix, just like the one on her arm. She's about to tell herself it doesn't matter, just like the ink on his forearm doesn't matter - _there's plenty of Catholic Marines_ , she thinks - but then she sees the blood on his knuckles and looks at her own hand without even thinking about it.

The knuckles of her right hand are covered in silvery lines, the echo of the red welts on him, and she wants to cry. A ragged gasp escapes her, and he turns towards her sharply, but she bolts, heads into the shower and pukes straight into the drain.

 _Liv!_ He shouts, alarmed, and starts to tear after her.

 _Just give me a second!_ She heaves again, and he backs off; he doesn't have a weak stomach, but he's antsy around vomit. It's one of many things she's learned about him over the last year.

It's him. It's always been him. This fucking asshole. This son of a bitch. This bastard with his beautiful wife and his four beautiful kids and his beautiful fucking house in fucking Queens. Tears sting at her eyes, and she bites them back, afraid she's gonna puke again.

Somewhere in her heart she's been worried about this all along. Worried that when she finds her soulmate he won't want her, that he'll have already tied himself to someone else; it's not unheard of. Things happen. Life doesn't always follow a predictable path. From the moment she was conceived Liv's never been wanted, not by anybody, and he was the one person who was _supposed_ to, who was destined to. He's the one who's supposed to love her, and he loves someone else, and she couldn't live with herself if she broke up a happy home. All those kids - _Jesus,_ she thinks, _did he have to be Catholic? -_ and Kathy, pretty blonde Kathy who's invited Olivia around for dinner and served her food made by her own two hands, this would shatter them, ruin their lives, and Olivia can't do that to them.

But he's _hers,_ and she wants to wail when she thinks about the unfairness of it all. Why couldn't they have met sooner? Why'd he have to fall for Kathy? Why couldn't he wait for her? Why-

She stops herself before the questions make her start sobbing in earnest. Whatever else she is, Olivia has always tried to be a problem solver. Her earliest memories are of taking care of her mother, and that's one thing she knows how to do well, look after people. The best thing, she thinks, would be for her to leave SVU and never talk to Elliot Stabler again. If she stays she'll fall for him - she knows that, knows it like she knows the outline of his tattoos on her skin. It's destiny. And it's a bitch.

But she can't leave, either. This job, it's everything to her. It really is everything, she realizes with a sudden swoop of her stomach; she's never gonna have that life, a happy marriage and babies and a warm home full of love. She's never gonna have a family, because she'll never take Elliot away from his. This job, this work, it gives her purpose. It's the only purpose she's ever gonna have.

And it gives her a chance to stay with him. Not the way she wants, not the way she needs, not the way any little girl would dream of, but it's something. If she stays, she'll see him every day. They'll laugh and they'll fight and they'll watch each other's backs, and he'll be her partner. It's the most self-destructive decision she's ever made, in a long line of them. She never gets enough to eat, never gets enough sleep, keeps going out with the wrong sort of men and doesn't seem to learn any lessons, keeps running any time things get too hard, but this...this has the power to break her. Falling in love with him by inches and never letting him touch her. It might just kill her.

But leaving him would be worse.

 _You can do this,_ she tells herself. _As long as he never finds out._

So she takes a deep breath, stands back as far as she can and turns the shower on, lets it wash the last of her bile down the drain. She squares her shoulders, turns around, and faces his bewildered stare. It isn't fair, she thinks, that he's strong and brave and handsome and the best man she's ever known. It isn't fair that he gave up on her before they ever even met, traded her future for a sweet girl who isn't broken like she is. It isn't _fair,_ but he's hers, and this is the only way she'll ever have him.

 _Let's go,_ she tells him. It's all she'll say; if she has her way, she'll take her secret to the grave.


	3. Chapter 3

I.

A psycho stalker's got Liv in his sights, and she's refusing a protective detail. She says she doesn't need it, says she can look after herself, says it would just be playing into the perp's hands, admitting that he's been successful at terrorizing her. The truth is she's stubborn as hell and more likely to throw a punch than admit to weakness; the asshole could break into her apartment and she'd still claim she didn't need backup.

 _That's my girl,_ Elliot thinks before he remembers he's not supposed to. He feels guilty and scared and proud all at once; he still hasn't told her the truth, told her that she's his soulmate, told her he's destined to fall in love with her but he's already signed himself away to someone else. Telling her would ruin everything, and things - this thing, working with her, living with Kathy, keeping the two most important women in his life separate from one another - are going good. Too good for him to fuck it up now. Liv is in love with the job, and she's having plenty of fun in her private life - _fucking Cassidy,_ he thinks, fucking Cassidy got to see her naked, got to touch her; _Jesus,_ he thinks, _why'd it have to be Cassidy? -_ and he doesn't want to ruin it for her.

So he parks his car in front of her building and tells her to flash her lights at him when she gets upstairs. He knows already which windows are hers, but they don't talk about that. And he tells himself he's not doing it because he loves her - because he doesn't, he thinks, or not yet, or not in the way he thought he would - but because she's his partner, and watching her back is his job. He tries to tell himself he'd say the same thing if it was Fin sitting in the passenger's seat next to him but he knows that's a lie. If it was Fin, he wouldn't have lied to the man's face and ordered the protective detail behind his back, like he's done to her. The fact of the matter is it isn't Fin whose life's in danger. It's _Olivia,_ and he'll die himself before he lets anything happen to her. He tries not to think about what that means.

II.

It's almost sweet, she thinks, the way he looks out for her. It's been a few months since she found his mark on her hand, and in a way she's come to terms with it. She knows now how young he was when he got married, when Maureen was born. Too young for the mark, and she can almost forgive him for it. When he got married he didn't even know she existed, wouldn't find out until she turned eighteen two years later. He didn't give up on her; he chose to step up and support his family, and there's a part of her that loves him for it. This soulmate of hers, he's a good man, despite the bravado and the anger and the tendency towards bending the rules to suit himself.

He's a good man and he's refusing to leave until she blinks her lights at him from her apartment upstairs, and she calls him a _stubborn son of a bitch_ with a smile on her face. He's a father, a father who is fiercely protective of his children, and that protectiveness has now been extended to her. Now she's under his wing, one of his people, and there's nothing Elliot won't do for one of his people. Coming from someone else this behavior would infuriate her; coming from him, though, it just makes her feel sad and fond of him all at once. There's no way he knows - Elliot's too damn loud, she thinks, and too damn religious, and he's too bad at hiding his emotions to bottle up a secret like this - and so _she_ knows he isn't doing it because she's his soulmate, because he loves her, because he's supposed to. He's doing it because he wants to. The fact that he cares enough to do this for her, to watch over her, to make sure she gets something to eat, to frown at her dates on the few occasions he catches sight of them, it shows her that she's important to him. Liv's never been important to anybody. It's a new sensation, but not an unwelcome one.

She leaves him in the car and makes her way into her apartment, and she flashes her kitchen lights at him. A second later she hears his car driving off, and she smiles. _Asshole,_ she thinks fondly.

III.

It doesn't make any sense. That's what he keeps thinking as rage bubbles up in the pit of his stomach. They've been working together two years now, a little more than, and this is hardly the first time she's come walking out of the locker rooms in a slinky black dress that makes his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth, ready to go out on the town with another man. For God's sake, she fucked _Cassidy,_ and he managed to keep it together then. He remembers that day, her eyes huge and dark and impossibly close, full of worry, telling him she's afraid it meant more to Cassidy than it did to her. Maybe that's why he didn't get angry then, because by the time he found out she'd already moved on, and he knew Cassidy wasn't a threat. Not that any of them are, really, because he's got no claim on her. Liv is his soulmate, marked as the one woman he's supposed to spend the rest of his life with, but she's never gonna wear his ring. There's no reason she can't go out with someone else.

Only this time, tonight, it makes him angry. And maybe that's because this dress is sleeveless, and he can see she's covered the tattoos on her arms. He looked for them, when she came walking out in that dress, and he didn't see them, but he knows they're there. It's makeup, probably - Kathy would know how to do it, he thinks, and frowns - but she's covered them. The evidence that she belongs to him, and she's covered it up. If she was looking for her soulmate surely she'd wear them proudly, ask any prospective boyfriend to roll up his sleeve on the first date so she'd know whether he was worth her time. His friends have told him about girls who cut themselves discreetly, early in a relationship, just to check; why fool around with someone who's not your soulmate?

Only Liv seems to be doing just that. On purpose. She's not trying to find her soulmate; she's hiding from him. One glance at her date and she'll know, and she'll fuck him anyway, and that makes Elliot furious. Why doesn't she want him? If she wants to get married and have babies and be in love so damn bad, why isn't she trying to find him? She's nearly thirty-three, biological clock's ticking, and she's wasting her time with losers like Cassidy. It's making him crazy.

She cracks some joke as she walks by and he snaps, reaches for her arm to stop her. It's territorial and possessive and a dick move, but he's always had this streak of need in him. He's always wanted what's his.

When he grabs her Liv spins towards him, mouth open to protest and eyes spitting fire at him. She doesn't like getting jerked around, doesn't like a man who touches her like he owns her, and he knows exactly why, but he just can't seem to stop. It's been too long going on like this, swallowing his pride and choking on his secret, and his heart is about to explode out of his chest.

"What are you doing?" he asks her in a harsh, angry whisper. "Wasting your time with losers like this?"

There's a flash of something that looks an awful lot like guilt in her eyes and his stomach turns itself inside out at the sight.

"You don't even know his name," she spits back at him. "How do you know he's a loser?"

She wrenches her arm out of his grip, and it's only then that he realizes his mistake. If there's one thing he's learned about makeup over the years, it's that it doesn't always stay in place. Both their eyes flick to her forearm reflexively, Liv checking to make sure the tattoo's still covered like she's probably done a million times before, Elliot checking to see if it's there, looking for the proof he needs that she belongs to _him,_ and not the dickhead of the week.

The heat of his hand sliding against her skin has done its work, and he can just make out the words _Semper Fi_ tattooed on her arm, and something inside his chest breaks. Liv's eyes flick up to his face, terrified now, and they're in the bullpen, there's people around, they can't raise their voices, can't draw attention, but Elliot can't stop himself either. His own sleeve is rolled up, his tattoo on full display and he thrusts it in front of her, holds his forearm next to hers, their marks side by side.

"Because whoever he is, he's not the one for you," Elliot hisses.

IV.

Olivia can't decide if she wants to puke or if she wants to punch him.

Everything had been going so well. She'd accepted the truth about Elliot, that he's going to be the most important person in her world and that he's never going to feel the same way about her. Really, she's made her peace with it. There's plenty of people out there who never get marked at all, plenty of people who do but for one reason or another can't, or won't, be with their person. There's no reason she has to be lonely, she tells herself, and she's making it work.

But it only works as long as this thing is a secret, as long as Elliot doesn't know. She thinks there's no way they can stay partners, not with this out in the open, and if they're not partners she won't have him at all, and she hates the way she can taste bile in her mouth at the thought of losing even this small piece of him.

Only Elliot, this _asshole,_ has apparently already figured it out. How long has he known, and not said anything? Was he really planning to keep something this important from her? The anger she feels in this moment is so deep she doesn't even stop to think that she's been lying to him about the same damn thing. All she can think is _how dare he._

She should have seen this coming. She should have known he'd get aggressive, possessive, that he wouldn't want to _share_ her, even when he won't claim her for himself. After all, he's the same asshole who branded her years ago. That tattoo...he wanted to mark her forever, and in so doing he's made it impossible for her to forget him, and impossible to attract a good man. The good men, most of them turn around and run when they finally see the tattoos, realize that Liv belongs to a Catholic Marine with a reckless streak. The good men don't want any trouble.

"Fuck you," she hisses at him, and he grabs her arm again, drags her off to the locker room. She'd fight him but she knows he's right; they can't ignore this forever. They've got to talk about it, and they need to do it _now_ , in private.

Elliot bangs through the locker room, checks to make sure they're completely alone before he leans back against the door and crosses his arms over his chest, making sure they won't be caught off guard if someone comes walking in on them and blocking her escape in the process. A wild sort of fear rises up inside Olivia's chest; she doesn't like not having an exit strategy, and there's no way out of this. They both know; they're in it now.

"Liv," he sighs, runs his hand over his face, and he's not angry anymore, not really. At least, she doesn't think he is.

"Listen, you don't have to explain anything to me," she tells him quickly. "I get it."

"Do you?" his eyes flash up at her, and her stomach swoops unpleasantly. There's something, there's always been something, dangerously attractive about this man. His smile, his bright blue eyes, his strength; she thinks she'd want him anyway, even if fate hadn't taken that decision out of her hands.

"I do," she answers. She crosses her arms over her chest but then she remembers the dress she's wearing and realizes how that movement will just draw his attention to her tits, and she drops her arms quick, not wanting to give him another reason to stare at her with that look in his eyes like he wants to swallow her whole. "I'm your partner, remember? I know your whole fucking life story."

How he got married too young, how he joined the Marines to provide for his family, how his dad was an asshole and his mom was unpredictable, how he'll do anything for his kids. Anything, even walking away from the love of his life. _I hope Kathy knows how lucky she is,_ Olivia thinks, but then she wonders about Kathy, and whether she's got marks of her own, and whether there's a man out there who was meant for Kathy, too, but won't ever have her. _I should find him,_ Olivia thinks, and fights a sudden, wild urge to laugh. _What a pair we'd make._

"It isn't...I didn't…It's not like..." He's actually speechless, struggling to get the words out, and Olivia's never seen him like this. Of course, he's never tried to talk to her about his _feelings_ , and she knows this is hard for him. What he's doing now, trying to tell her that he didn't have any other choice, that this isn't what he wanted, it's killing him. Admitting to something like that, admitting that the family he's supposed to be devoted to is an accident that a part of him regrets, will break him in half. She can't do that to him.

"It's done," she tells him. There's a part of her that wants to know when he found out, how he feels about it, what he'd do if he wasn't married, if he'd wrap his arms around her right here in the locker room and kiss her like she's never been kissed in her whole life. But that's a one way ticket to devastation, all this _what ifs_ and _might have beens._ This isn't a fairytale; he'll never be hers.

"Liv-"

"You've made your choices," she tells him. "And I respect them." And she does, God help her, she does. If he'd knocked Kathy up at seventeen and abandoned her, he wouldn't be the man Olivia loves. "This job is important to me and I don't want to lose it."

"I know, Liv, _Christ,_ I know. I don't wanna fuck this up for you." There's a sincerity in his eyes she's only ever seen before when he's talking to a vic, telling them it's not their fault, promising them they're not alone. She wonders if he thinks of her that way. If he thinks she's wounded. She is, but she wonders if he can see it, wonders if he knows it's his fault.

"Then don't," she tells him. "We've made it work so far, yeah?"

"Yeah," he says, shoulders sagging as he realizes she isn't trying to leave him, and isn't going to beg him to leave his wife either. She wonders if he knows how fucking lucky he is; she could make his life hell, but she won't. Maybe that's why they're meant for each other. They share the same heart, and in that heart they both want to keep his family whole, to protect his wife, his children, from the mess they've made.

"I'm never going to ask you for anything else," she tells him. "I'm just asking you to be my partner, and not let this thing," she gestures between them, "fuck that up."

"Ok," he says. "Ok. That's all I want, too."

It's meant as a reassurance but it hits her like a slap. All he wants is for her to be his partner, nothing more. Maybe he doesn't dream about her, doesn't want her, doesn't love her, after all. He's lived a lifetime with Kathy, and all Olivia's done is work with him for a few years. She doesn't know what he's like at home, what it's like to fall asleep beside him, spend a lazy day off together. And she never will.

"All right," she says, and approaches him. "Then I'm going out, and you're going to have to find a way to not be a dick about it."

That smile flashes across his face, the smug, wolfish smile he showed her the moment they first met. It's a smile, she realizes, that says _you're mine._

"What do you tell them?" he asks as she draws near. Liv really, really wants to leave, but he won't move out from in front of the door, and she can't let herself back down. One step, another, and then she's right up close to him, so close they're almost touching. It's nothing new; they stand this close all the time. Only now, in this moment, they've breathed life into their secret. It's out in the open, the truth that they're supposed to fall in love - and fuck, that's part of the bargain, and they both know it - and now standing close to him feels like dangling her toes off a cliff. He knows she wants him, now. She knows he wants her, too. They both _know,_ and they both _want._

"These assholes," he says, and his voice has dropped to a gravelly whisper. "When they see your arm and they know you belong to someone else, what do you tell them?"

There's something dark in his eyes she recognizes. He wants every man she fucks to know they're on borrowed time. He _wants_ them to know she belongs to him. And he's an asshole, because he'll never touch her.

"What do you tell your wife?" she fires back, and in a moment of daring she lets her hand settle on his hip, right on the spot where she knows he's sporting a pretty little butterfly tattoo.

Now he's the one who looks wounded, and he backs off at once. She's touched a nerve and she knows it, but she had to. Whatever he wants, Elliot can't have it both ways. If he's gonna stay with Kathy, he's gotta let her go.

"See you tomorrow," he says, and ducks his head, shoves his hands in his pockets. It's a gesture of capitulation; _message received._

"See you tomorrow," she answers, and then she walks away. For a minute she considers cancelling the date, but then she changes her mind. _Fuck him,_ she thinks, but she can't, so she fucks her date instead. It'll have to be enough.


	4. Chapter 4

I.

"Yeah," he says into the phone while his wife stirs sleepily beside him. "Yeah, I'll call Liv, we'll meet you there."

Kathy sighs; she knows already what he's gonna say when he hangs up the phone, so he doesn't bother explaining to her, just turns and plants a kiss against her forehead.

"Sorry, baby," he tells her as he rolls out of bed. She's heard it all before.

"You know, you spend more time with her than you do with me. _Liv."_ She says the nickname like it's leaving a bad taste in her mouth, and Elliot turns to look at her, alarmed. It's been a long time since his little confrontation with Olivia in the locker room, and they're making it work. Elliot and _Liv._ Sometimes it's a little tricky, hiding the mark if one of them gets jammed up, but mostly they don't get hurt in places where other people can see. If they do, Liv's spent a long time honing her skills with the makeup, and besides, the marking is pale, and easy to miss if someone isn't looking in just the right place at the right time. No one at work suspects a thing, he's sure, and until now he'd been sure that Kathy didn't either. He certainly never told her, and he's tried his best to be an attentive husband, not to let his thoughts linger too long on the life he could have had if only he wasn't such an asshole.

"It's the job, Kath," he tells her, sliding into a clean shirt, covering up the latest mark; whoever Liv's with tonight, he's left a blooming bruise on her breast, and a matching silver welt on Elliot's pec. He's trying not to think about what that mark means, or how it got there.

"Olivia got any tattoos?" she asks him.

This is what he's most afraid of. More than he's afraid of breaking Olivia's heart, more than he's afraid that he's gone against God and fucked up his whole life, more than he's afraid of Cragen finding out; he lives in terror of Kathy discovering the truth. Even though he's never touched Liv, even though he never will, spending all day - and sometimes all night - with her, looking forward to it more than he looks forward to being in his own home, feels like infidelity. Kathy would never forgive him.

"None that I've ever seen," he tells her shortly. He knows what Kathy's asking. They've been together their entire adult lives; they understand each other. "It's not her."

"Would you tell me if it was? If you'd found the butterfly girl?"

That's what they call her, on the rare occasions they confront the truth that Elliot is marked for someone else. _The butterfly girl._ It's easier than saying _my soulmate._

"Would you want me to?"

Kathy takes a minute to think it over. That's one of the things that's kept them together so long, he knows; Kathy thinks things through, and he never does, and they balance each other out. Not like him and Liv. Olivia feeds something inside him, pushes buttons he didn't even know he had, makes him afraid of himself sometimes. The marking says she's the one for him, but he wonders sometimes if maybe fate got it wrong on this one. Surely, he thinks, he and Olivia would rip each other to pieces.

"Yeah," she tells him finally. "Yeah, I want to know."

"Well, then, when I meet her, I'll tell you. But right now, I have no idea who she is, and I don't care. I love you, Kath."

It's a lie - not the part about loving her, never that, but the rest of it - and it's not the first. There will be a hundred, a thousand more lies just like this one in the years ahead. But he kisses her anyway, and heads out the door. He'll call Liv from the car; he doesn't want her voice ringing in his ear when he's standing in his family's home.

II.

"What's the story here?" he asks her softly, smoothing his palm over the silver crucifix that covers her bicep. The color of it identifies it as a mark, not a tattoo of her own; the marking has its own special silvery sheen, and everybody she's ever met can recognize it on sight.

Liv likes this guy. She really, really likes this guy, and she doesn't want to fuck it up. He's seen her marks, he knows there's someone else, but he's neither gloating nor guilty. He just seems curious, and he's gentle, lying naked in her bed, and she hopes that's a good sign. Taking a deep breath, then, she tells him the truth.

"He's married," she says, and then quickly adds, "to someone else." She doesn't want this guy to get the wrong idea.

"Shit," the guy says. "And you're ok with that?"

"It happened a long time ago," she shrugs. "It's the way things have always been, and the way they'll always be."

It's not like she ever got to date him, kiss him, touch him, hold him in her bed. She doesn't know what she's missing, and she thinks surely that makes things easier. You can't grieve for something you never had, she tells herself.

"What about you?" she asks him then. It's standard getting-to-know-you conversation; _have you been marked, where, do you know who she is,_ trying to find out if the histories line up enough to turn this date into a lifetime. They're questions Liv doesn't usually ask; there's no point, she thinks. Whoever she's with, she knows he's not her soulmate. This time, though, she wants to know.

"She died," he tells her quietly.

 _That's kind of perfect,_ Liv thinks, and hates herself for it. But if his soulmate's gone, forever, and hers is married to someone else, forever, then maybe-

Beside the bed her cell phone starts to ring, and he picks it up.

"Who's Elliot?" he asks, looking at the name on the screen.

"My partner," she tells him, taking the phone from his hand. It's their third date; she's told him what she does for work, and that doesn't scare him, either, and things are getting better by the second. Only now Elliot's called, and she'll have to leave behind this man, and her warm bed, and go out into the cold again.

"Hey," she says.

"Hey." She hates how much she likes the sound of his voice; she really, really hates it. "Sorry to interrupt."

His tone is low, and teasing. Olivia hadn't told him she had a date tonight - she doesn't always, doesn't like to rub it in - but there's a hickey blooming across her breast and apparently he's seen it already. She wonders how that makes him feel, walking around with the evidence of another man's affection for her written on his skin. She hopes it drives him crazy.

"We got a case?" she asks.

"We got a case," he confirms, and just like that it's over. Elliot gives her the address and she knows he'll turn up with coffee, and so she rolls out of bed, and starts the first of many apologies she's going to have to make to this man over the course of their blossoming relationship. The job comes first; it always will.

III.

When it all goes to shit, it catches him off guard, somehow. It's been years of this now, years of working with Olivia, living with Kathy, taking care of his kids and doing his job and making it work. Kathy's happy, Olivia lives for the job, and he's soaking it all in, taking as much as he can get. That makes him a selfish bastard, and he knows it, but _Christ,_ it had all seemed so...easy.

Well, maybe not easy. Some prick leaves a cut above his eyebrow and Liv has to style her bangs to cover it for a week. She gets a shiner and then she has to stand in the locker room with him every morning, carefully applying a layer of god only knows what around his eye to hide the silver sheen of the mark. A case runs late and they've gotta eat and they end up huddled together around cartons of take-away and he forgets for a second that he's not supposed to love her. The kids are growing up and they're giving him hell every step of the way. Kathy reaches for him less often now, and hides her hands from him, and he doesn't know what she's thinking any more.

But it's _working._ Olivia never gives him hell about the choices he's made; most of the time, she's the one telling him to go home to his kids when he lingers, reminding him that whatever fate might try to tell them his place is with his family, and not with the woman he loves. Kathy doesn't ask about the butterfly girl, even though she won't let him kiss her if he's got a fresh mark on him somewhere from some scrape Olivia got into. Everybody's...not happy, exactly, but they've all got what they need and they're carrying on.

Only today, some prick sliced Liv across the belly with a knife, and Elliot's made the mistake of telling Kathy about it.

"She'll be all right," he says as he stands beside their bed, slowly peeling off his clothes and explaining to his wife why he's getting home so late. Somebody had to take Liv to the hospital, and he's down as her emergency contact on all the forms. There's no one else to call, and he hates that so much he could scream, but he knows it's his fault. Liv's got no one else but him, and she's only got him when they're working a case, and that's all down to his stupid fucking choices. And to her being the best damn woman he's ever known, because he can't imagine anyone else making the sacrifices Olivia has just to keep his family together. Other people divorce, but he's Catholic and he loves his kids and he made a promise to Kathy and _Christ_ -

"It wasn't that deep," he says. "Only needed a few stitches."

Kathy is watching him from the bed as he strips off his shirt. She's got that look in her eyes like she's trying to decide whether to fuck him or not. He hopes the answer will be _yes;_ it's been a long time, and he's lonesome, only getting half a life with both the women he loves, not getting everything from either of them.

"And you took her home?"

"Yeah, we were in the squad car. Figured I might as well."

Suddenly, sharply, without warning, something dark and dangerous and flashes in Kathy's eyes, and it scares the shit out of him. She hasn't looked at him like that since he got his second tattoo.

"Elliot," she says very slowly in a tone of voice that tells him plainly she has no plans to fuck him any time soon, "where did you say Olivia got cut?"

"Stomach," he says, confused, wondering why the hell it matters. "Left side, right above-"

Right above the tattoo they both share, right above the butterfly Kathy's been staring at for years now, right where there's a matching silver mark trailing across his skin, right where his wife can see. _Shit,_ he thinks.

"You... _asshole,"_ Kathy spits out at him, and it's the first time in their entire lives he's ever heard her say that word. He knows he deserves it, though, and hangs his head in shame. "You lied to me."

In a flash she's rolling out of bed, and his stomach drops because she's wearing a pretty little lace babydoll and he realizes just how bad he's fucked this up. All these years, Kathy has loved him, stood by him, has tried so hard to make this work. Tonight she'd laid down wearing something special, hoping for something special in return, and all he's handed her is evidence that he's been lying to her for years, about the one thing no man should ever, _ever_ lie to his wife about.

"Listen," he says, and catches her by the arm, but she wrenches herself out of his grip, her eyes full of fire. "You're my _wife."_ He's gotta keep his voice down, can't let the kids catch wind of this. They're growing up, must have noticed by now that Kathy doesn't have the silvery echo of his tattoos on her skin. The day's coming when they'll have to explain all this to the kids, but they were supposed to do that together, and now he's starting to feel like it's being taken out of his hands. Like fate, pissed off at the way he's tried to make his own path, has intervened to send him careening back where he was always meant to be. "Olivia-"

"You looked me in the eye and told me it wasn't her. That was _years_ ago, Elliot. _Years,_ you've been seeing her everyday, and lying to me, and…"

Her voice trails off, a terrible suspicion growing in her eyes, and Elliot cuts her off quick.

"Olivia knows," he tells her, and feels the anger coming off her in waves. "Olivia knows, and she agreed that we're not ever going to do anything about this. She doesn't want to take me away from you, Kathy. She sees other people, and I come home to you, and I have never so much as touched her!"

Anger makes his voice grow louder with every word. It's just so fucking _unfair;_ for years now he's been living three feet away from the life he could have had, denying himself the woman he loves in favor of protecting his family, and now Kathy's treating that sacrifice like it's something dirty, like no matter what he does he'll never make this right. He's starting to think that's the truth, anyway; there's no way out of this mess that doesn't hurt somebody.

"Maybe not," she says, and he knows she doesn't believe him. "But you _lied_ to me. You're gonna sleep on the couch tonight, and tomorrow I want you gone."

For a split second he almost grabs her. He wants to scream, to shake her, to put his fist through the wall. The whole fucking _point_ of torturing himself this way was to keep his marriage solid, to keep his family whole, but it's not enough for Kathy; she's kicking him out anyway. All these years, when he could have been...when he should have been...maybe if he'd been upfront with Kathy she would have been ok with it. _Like hell she would have._ Maybe Kathy would have left him years ago, and then….

His head is spinning, but he's been in SVU too long to put his hands on Kathy now. Violence and love can't ever mix, or he'll be no better than all the perps he's dragged into the cells over the years. Kathy will never let him back into her bed; consent firmly revoked. Fuming, then, he turns on his heel, and marches out of the room, trying to put as much space between Kathy and the words he wants to say to her as he can.

But he can't sleep on the couch, like some fucking asshole, can't risk the kids finding him there in the morning, and wondering why. Instead he gets in the car, drives across town, and passes a restless night in the cribs. In the morning he doesn't tell Olivia what happened. He can't; he's losing Kathy, and Liv has a bad habit of running from relationships that mean too much. He can't risk losing her, too.

IV.

The truth comes out eventually; it was always going to. The real reason he's been walking around with a shitty attitude, looking like a kicked puppy for days. Kathy's left him - or, more accurately, thrown him out - and for the first time in his entire life he's all alone. The news takes Olivia hard, because she knows, even though he hasn't said, that it's her fault. Somehow, she did something, whether it was pulling Elliot's heart away from his family or leaving a mark on his skin he couldn't explain away, _she_ did this. He tells her, and her first thought is that maybe it's time for her to put in for a new partner. It's dangerous, having him unattached like this, looking at her with hungry eyes; she can't let this get out of control. He's hurting and weak and missing the woman he's always loved more than her, and Olivia can't be the one to catch him when he falls, whatever the mark says.

It's midnight when her phone chirps and she's in bed with someone else, but it's Elliot texting her, asking her to come outside, and so she does, slides to her feet as quietly as she can and tiptoes out of her apartment feeling guilty all the way down the stairs. He's sitting on the stoop and so she sits down next to him, takes the cup of coffee he offers her and lets her shoulder brush his once in solidarity.

"It's not your fault," he says. They don't ever talk about it, the mark, the fact they're fated to fall in love with each other, if they haven't already. Talking about it makes it real, and if it's real they have to face it, and if they face it Olivia thinks it might just break them both in half. But he's talking about it now, and she knows it. He didn't turn up in front of her apartment in the dead of night to talk about work.

"Yeah, it is," she says. "She's your _wife,_ and I-"

"Stop it." His voice is harsh, the way it gets when she knows he's on the verge of exploding, and she wonders what it is that's made him so angry. If it's his wife leaving him, or the idea that Olivia thinks Kathy is more important than she is. In a second she gets her answer. "You've always, _always_ been important to me. Even before…"

Before he saw the mark on her skin, before he knew she was his soulmate. Before he loved her. It's a nice thought, the idea that he liked already, that he came to that conclusion on his own, but Olivia doesn't fully believe it. She's always wanted to be important to someone, always wanted someone to _choose_ her, but there's no room for choice where the mark is involved. Fate made up its mind about them the second Elliot was born, and she feels her own anger bubbling up inside. It isn't fucking _fair_ , that someone, _something_ out there has more power over her own life, her own heart, than she does.

"Fuck the mark," she says. "You made the choice. You wanted to put your family first."

It's one of the things she's always admired about him, that choice he made. _His_ choice, his decision, flying in the face of fate and what the world expects from him, building a safe, happy home for his kids, not using the mark as an excuse to evade his responsibilities. He's as stubborn as she is; they are made for each other.

"Yeah, and now…"

 _Oh, shit._ That's the last thing she wants. It's only been a few weeks since Kathy cut him loose, and he is flailing, trying and failing to find his own way. If he wants to fall into Olivia's arms he's in for a rude awakening. She's not gonna let him take the easy way out, settle for her now that the choice has been taken out of his hands, now that it's _easy._ Someone else can be his fucking rebound and teach him how to cook for himself and keep his apartment clean. Someone else can be his second choice, his fucking runner-up; she won't let him lie next to her and compare her to Kathy. They're never gonna be more than partners, that decision was made a long time ago.

"And now you've gotta make it right." That's one thing Olivia is sure about; he chose his family first, and it's his job to clean this mess up, and make that family whole again. Olivia grew up with no one but her mom, and she won't do that to Elliot's kids, too. Someone deserves to have a happy ending, and she knows she's never gonna get it, so she's fighting for the next best thing.

He's looking at her like he wants her to ask him to come upstairs, but he must see in her eyes that she's never gonna, because he drops his gaze to his coffee, and starts talking about work. Next to him on the stoop, Olivia sips from her own cup, and lets him talk.


	5. Chapter 5

I.

He knows what she's doing. Even though he didn't tell her the real reason why Kathy threw him out, Liv has found some way to blame herself for the end of his marriage, and she won't hear him when he tries to talk to her about it. When he tries to point out that they're marked for each other, that Kathy isn't the one for him, Liv's eyes get a little wild around the edges, and he understands why. She's resigned herself to this, to living their lives separate but together in this weird shuffling dance they've done for so many years now. She's decided his family is more important than her own heart, and she's not willing to take this chance now.

Pushing their relationship forward, acknowledging the mark and what it means, would spell the end of their partnership. Fin suspects, Elliot knows, but he's the only one, and he's keeping his mouth shut. But if Cragen found out, shit, if anyone else did, they'd be split up. Partners have to trust each other, but they can't be in love with each other. When it comes down to it, if a man has to choose between his partner and a member of the public, he's gotta choose the citizen, and let his partner hang. That's kind of hard to do if his partner is also the love of his life.

If they get split up at work, then all they'll have left is what's at home. And that's nothing, for right now, and when he thinks of it, thinks of kissing Olivia, touching her, thinks of holding her at night and saying goodbye to her in the morning, he's torn between desperate longing and sheer fucking terror. He's never been with anybody but Kathy. Since he was seventeen years old, no one but her. And Liv, he knows her inside out, backwards and forwards, knows the little noises she makes when she sleeps next to him in the car on a stakeout and how she takes her coffee, but there's so much he still doesn't know. So many secrets, so many soft, intimate things. A whole other person, one he knows he's never met, lives underneath her skin. A part of him wants to learn, and a part of him knows she'll never let him. Given the choice between working together and never touching, or touching but never working together again, Liv appears to have chosen work, and for now he's content to ride it out. _Something's gotta give_ , he thinks. It always does.

II.

When it comes, it feels inevitable, somehow, like all the years they've spent together have been leading up to this moment, this moment when they'll have to face the truth, when they won't be able to run from it anymore.

_Gitano._

Fucker stole two kids and he's on the run, and the poor bastard at the ticket counter loses his nerve and accidentally alerts the perp to the ring of cops slowly closing in on him. They all take off after him, racing through the station, trying to find some way to cut him off. Liv gets closest; she spies the little boy and races towards him, but it's all for nothing because in the next second there's a cold knife slicing across her neck and she's tumbling to the ground. It's more a shock than anything else; her hand rises to her neck and it's slippery with blood but not so much as to make her think she's gonna bleed out right there. She takes a breath - _windpipe's not cut -_ and then she hears his voice over the screaming crowd.

"Olivia, _god_ , no." she's never heard him so scared, never. There's a moment when he's gotta decide who to chase, her on the ground or Gitano with the kid, just a split second when everything hangs in the balance. Elliot doesn't know she's still breathing, can't see anything but her on the ground and blood on her hands, and her voice won't work. In his eyes, her life depends on what he chooses. He snaps; he does exactly what she'd do, in his shoes. He runs for her.

His hands hit her, warm, hard, full of life, and she gasps out at him. Tells him she's ok, tells him to get the kid. The cut's not as deep as it could be; it'll take some stitches, and it'll hurt like hell, and as Elliot turns to run after the kid she can see the matching silver mark on his own neck. _How are we gonna hide that_ , she thinks, and hysteria bubbles up in the back of her aching throat. She tries to swallow it back, tries to pull herself upright; the crowd has cleared out, no one stopping for a woman on the ground with blood all over her hands, but then there's screaming from the platform above.

It's finally happened. Elliot was presented with a choice, and he chose her, and a child has died. It's a hell of a way to get the one thing she always wanted.

III.

 _What about me,_ she says to him in a broken voice, and Elliot feels himself reeling as if she's slapped him. This case has turned him upside down, sent him spinning. A child is dead because of him, because he loves her, and for a second there he thought he'd pay his penance, thought Liv would be strong enough to do what he couldn't, strong enough to choose taking Gitano down over saving his life. Only now she's telling him that she couldn't, that she wouldn't, telling him it's because of his kids, that it's because of _her._ She couldn't take the shot because she couldn't lose him; it should make him happy, to know she loves him that much, as much as he loves her, but instead it only makes him feel sick. They're so monumentally fucked; their love has a body count, now.

What kills him is he knows she still won't accept him, but they can't keep going like this. Gitano has proven that neither of them is strong enough to choose the job over one another. That means they can't work together any more. He knows it, feels it in his bones; seeing her lying on the ground, seeing her blood seeping out between her fingers, imagining, even for a moment, that she might die before he ever gets to hold her the way he's always dreamed about, has shaken him to his core. The job isn't enough for him. Maybe it never was.

He needs a new partner, and he needs to kiss Olivia. Kathy's left him, the separation is moving forward, they're talking about custody arrangements, and he can't be nothing more than a partner to Liv, not after this. But when he turns towards her there's something that looks an awful lot like shame in her eyes, and he can't face it. If he kisses her now, he'll lose her forever, and he knows it.

IV.

He loses her anyway. First she goes to computer crimes and he thinks _maybe this is it,_ thinks maybe she's giving him space to become more than just a partner, but she won't answer his calls and he's too much of a coward to go to her apartment. Then she disappears, as good as if she never existed at all. No one will tell him where she went and Fin's got that look in his eyes like he knows exactly what Elliot's lost.

He's coming unglued. Kathy left, Liv left, he only sees the kids every other weekend and then only if he doesn't have an active case. The apartment's too small and the rent is crippling and he hasn't even had time to put pictures in frames, just has them jammed into the edge of the mirror over the bathroom sink. A couple shots of the kids, one of him and Liv he's always kept tucked inside the bible in the drawer of his bedside table. Part of him thinks he should take that one down.

The priest tells him to call his wife and he does the next best thing. He takes himself off to a tattoo shop across town, and calls out to Olivia in the only way he knows how.

V.

 _Who's Elliot,_ the girl asks her from the next bed over. Olivia is horrified to learn she's been whispering his name in her sleep. She's supposed to be undercover; who knows what else she's let slip from her hospital bed.

 _Nobody,_ she lies.

 _Nobody, huh,_ the girl laughs. _Does nobody have something to do with that mark on your shoulder?_

 _What is it?_ Olivia demands, trying to crane her head to get a look at where her hospital gown is gaping open in the back, but her neck won't stretch that far.

 _Just some numbers,_ the girl says. She reads them out and tears gather in the corner of Olivia's eyes. It's her badge number.

 _What's it mean?_ The girl asks.

_Nothing._

It's a lie; it means everything. It means _don't you forget about me, 'cause I haven't forgotten you._ It means _the job is what made us, and now there's no separating us._ It means he's marked her in a place she can't reach, a place she'll never be able to cover with makeup. It means he'll be with her, always. Like he wasn't already. It means she can't hide from him. It means he wants her to come home.

So she does.

VI.

Liv comes back not a minute too soon; he's going out of his mind without her, spiraling from bad decision to bad decision. He needs her, to ground him, keep him focused, make him whole. The whole time she's gone he keeps dreaming about her showing up at his door, telling him she's finally ready to give this, to give _them_ a shot. He wonders if she's found the tattoo, how, if she knows what it means. When she comes back she comes back to _work,_ and he knows he can't expect her to just jump into his arms. _Give it time,_ he tells himself.

VII.

Kathy asks Olivia to meet, and she says yes because what the fuck else is she supposed to say? They've never been close, Liv and Kathy, but they love the same man and they worry about him and they've developed a certain understanding over the years. Olivia has no idea what she expects from Kathy when she goes to the park, but it certainly isn't this, Kathy asking her to get him to sign the divorce papers.

 _We both know he belongs with someone else,_ Kathy tells her in a heavy, knowing way that scares that shit of her. Like Kathy, somehow, knows already that it's _Olivia_ who's meant to take Kathy's husband away, like maybe she's made her peace with it. Maybe she does know; Olivia's stomach twists inside her, wondering what Elliot's told her, wondering what secrets he's keeping, and from who.

 _You're his wife,_ Olivia says, and she wonders if Kathy can hear what she's not saying. That for all these years, she has toed the line, respected the ring on his finger and never asked him for anything more, never reached for him in a moment of weakness, never let him break his vows. She wonders if it matters.

 _Once he signs those papers I won't be,_ Kathy tells her. _He'll be a free agent._

That scares the shit out of Olivia, too. If he's not married, if Kathy has pushed him away and the decision's been taken out of his hands, then he'll be free to love her. It feels less like a choice and more like a jail cell door sliding closed; they are meant to be, and nothing, not what she wants, not the life she's tried to build, the values she's tried to respect, can stop it. She's never liked feeling as if she doesn't have a choice. She doesn't tell Elliot about the conversation with Kathy, about the way she thinks she's just been given permission to fuck him, if she wants to. About the way she wants to, the way she's always wanted to, if she's honest. She doesn't tell him but after a sleepless night she shows up at his building at 4:30 in the morning with a cup of coffee for him and tea for her, and he sits down on the stoop next to her and tells her he's signed them anyway.

And, weird as it seems, that reassures her, just a little. She steals glances at him from the corner of her eye, the streetlights shining on the worn skin of his face, sirens wailing off in the distance, the city coming to life around them. It wasn't Kathy who got him to sign the divorce papers, and it wasn't Olivia begging him to that did it, either; he's come to that decision on his own. Nobody forced his hand. He's made his choice.

She isn't sure, yet, if that means he's chosen her, or if he's just chosen to let Kathy go. There's a lot of questions left to answer - are either of them prepared to split up at work? After all this time of trying to keep their relationship strictly platonic can they really slide into romance? Will it feel right, when he finally kisses her, or will she still feel like she's breaking the law somehow? - but she thinks they've got time, now.

She teases him a little, and he accepts it, and they stride off into the sunrise together in search of a greasy breakfast, their shoulders almost - but not quite - touching. It feels, she thinks, like a new beginning.

VIII.

He's gotta see the kids. After all this shit, he just has to lay eyes on them, reassure himself that they're ok, that they're still breathing, that they're not FUBAR because of him.

It's been months, now. The apartment feels a little more like home, and he's bought a futon so Dickie can sleep there and Lizzie can have the bed and Elliot can camp in a sleeping bag in the corner of the living room on the weekends they come over. Mo and Kathleen are too old for visitation, now, but he calls them every now and again, and they always answer, and he figures he couldn't ask for more than that. Things are going good with Olivia, or as good as they ever will; they've found their stride again, at work. She still won't let him touch her, though, and when he leans towards her he sees her eyes flash towards the nearest exit.

It's something they've gotta talk about, and he knows it, but he lives in fear of that conversation. She's so gorgeous, every time he looks at her he feels an actual, physical pain in his heart. When they're together they're so in sync; he knows just what she's thinking, and she makes him laugh, keeps him calm when he needs it, lets him have his head when he's got his back up about something. They fight and she gets right back up in his face; she's never backed down from anything. Well, not from anything except _this,_ this nebulous, terrifying knowledge that they're in love with each other. Sometimes he wonders how he'd feel about her, if it wasn't for the mark. He _knows_ he still loves her, but he wonders if he'd spend so much time thinking about a future where they wake up in the same bed if he didn't already know for a fact that she was his soulmate. He wonders if she'd fight him so hard on this if she didn't know that decision had already been made. Maybe if it weren't for the mark, maybe if they were just muddling through this on their own, they would have fucked months ago.

But they are marked, and they haven't fucked, and he feels certain they're never gonna. When it comes to sharing herself with some jackass who'll be gone the next morning Liv doesn't seem to have a problem, but when it comes to _this,_ to the knowledge that he's the one she's supposed to be with forever, she seems terrified. It's always been that way. He's starting to think it always will.

So when he goes to Kathy's, goes to see the kids, goes to assure himself that his children are still alive, he sees the look in her eyes, and feels the tug of shame in his gut. He promised her he was never gonna leave - hell, he promised _Olivia_ \- and then he did. He swore he was never gonna fuck up his kids, and he's afraid that he has. Liv won't let him touch her and it's killing him having to hold himself back and he's been so fucking lonely, and Kathy is right there. Kathy who knows him, Kathy who loves him, Kathy who owns every second of every minute of every day of his life from childhood until about a year ago.

 _If you're gonna be here,_ she tells him, _then be here._

He knows what it means, but she digs in that little bit deeper.

_You and Liv have had all this time to figure it out. You gotta decide, Elliot. You can't keep stringing her along, and you can't keep crawling back here when she won't have you. What's it gonna be?_

What's it gonna be? He's just worked one of the hardest cases of his life and he's driven all the way across town in the middle of the night and Kathy's asking him to choose. To choose between Olivia, who he loves, but who will never be more than his partner, and his _family._ He asks himself what Liv would want, what she'd tell him to do, and he hears her words echoing down through his memories.

 _Now you gotta make it right,_ her voice tells him.

He chooses his family. It's what Liv would want.

VIV

When she comes into work his desk is cleared out and Cragen's motioning to her from his office.

 _Elliot put in his papers,_ he says.

She just nods, doesn't hear the rest of it over the roar in her ears. Blindly she turns, makes her way to the locker room, and pukes into the shower drain just like she did the day she found Elliot's mark on her skin for the first time.

It doesn't take a genius to work out what's happened; cases involving kids always make Elliot think of his own. And yeah, the divorce is official, and yeah, he's in love with Olivia, but she's been too scared to let him in, and he's made his choice. He's done what she's been telling him to do for years. He's put his family first.

It's her own damn fault, and she knows it. She's seen the look in his eyes, the way his hands reach for her, and she's backed away, every time. There's been a wall between them from the moment he shoved his tattoo next to hers in the locker room, and she's the one who put it there. Her heart wants love but her head doesn't know what to do with it, and she's pushed it aside, time and time again, terrified that love might break her in half, might take away her very self. Who would she be, if she wasn't working with Elliot? What would happen to her if they gave it a shot, and it all fell apart? Both of them carry so much rage, so much grief; she isn't sure that much pain can exist under one roof without blowing the top right off it. She was too scared to find out, and now she's lost him. For good, completely.

All she ever wanted was for someone to choose her. Maybe Elliot tried to; maybe that's what happened when he signed the papers. But when it came down to it she couldn't pull the trigger, and now he's gone.

Forever.


	6. Chapter 6

I.

He's forty when Kathy tells him, laughing, that she's pregnant. Mo is twenty-three, and the thought of starting all over again, the thought of a _fifth_ child, makes him feel like he's gonna puke. But then he remembers how it was when each of his children was born, how it felt to hold them, to see their little faces, thinks of how much he loves them, how he'd do anything for them. He thinks of the promise he's made, and the woman who's spent the last twenty-three years of her life with him, and he kisses her, and tells her he loves her.

Kathy doesn't get sick in the mornings; there's no predicting when it'll hit her. That night he's lying in bed, and she's throwing up - he knows from experience she doesn't want him in the room with her when she's like that - and he's lying in bed when he reaches into the bedside table, and pulls out his bible. He doesn't read it often any more, but he's thinking maybe he should. Maybe he'll find peace if he does, maybe he'll find the reassurance he needs, some words that confirm for him that he's made the right choice. He loves Kathy, and he knows he'll love that baby when it comes, but there's a part of his heart that feels shattered, still.

The pages of the bible flutter open on his lap, and there it is. Not the reassurance he was hoping for. It's not a passage about faithfulness or the sanctity of marriage; it's an old picture of him and Liv, taken during their first year as partners. Before he found out about the mark. Her hair is dark and thick and shiny and her smile is wide and easy and his arm is slung around her shoulders, and the breath freezes in his lungs.

It was Liv who pushed him away, Liv who told him to put his family first. It was Liv he wanted more, but it wasn't Liv he chose. He wonders where she is, what she's doing. He wonders if he should tell her about the baby, or if it'll just break her heart all over again. They spent a long time together; he knows she wants a child, and he knows the adoption people won't look at her twice as long as she's a cop, and he knows he's just gone and made a baby with someone else, and Liv is still alone. That's on him. It's his fault, and his stomach heaves, and he closes the bible.

He doesn't tell her.

II.

There's a picture of him stuck into the edge of the mirror above her dresser. It's a picture of them, really, his arm around her shoulder, her smile wide and bright. _We were so young,_ she thinks when she looks at it. All those years, all that history, every look, every touch, every wound; it made her what she is. Knowing him, loving him, has changed her on some fundamental level, and she's afraid she's never gonna be whole again. He is the other half of her heart, and she doesn't know how to keep her half going, without him. A part of her knows she ought to take the picture down, but she never does.

Time passes. She stops wearing makeup to cover the tats. With Elliot gone she doesn't have to hide them at work; Cragen and Fin, they'll recognize Elliot's tattoos, but he's not her partner any more, and Nick's never seen Elliot's bare arms. It doesn't matter, any more.

Time passes. Faces come and go. Brian Cassidy wanders back into her life and she jumps at the chance to spend time with someone who knew her back then, someone who remembers the girl she used to be. Other men see the picture on her mirror and ask about him, and whatever answer she gives they don't like it. Brian sees it, and frowns, but he knows the answers already, and he kisses her anyway.

Time passes.

III.

Eli's birth has broken them in some ways, and Elliot knows it. They're too damn tired for this, and his work as an instructor at the police academy is boring him to tears, and one night he catches sight of a mark on Kathy's hand.

 _I don't know who he is,_ she tells him. _I never found him._

There's an accusation there, one she doesn't voice. There's a man who's marked for Kathy, and she has never found him, never even had the chance to look, since she's spent her entire life married to Elliot, raising his children. But Elliot found his butterfly girl. Elliot got ten years with her, the woman he loves. He got to hold her, got to wash her blood off his hands, got to find out _exactly_ who she is, the other half of his soul. His butterfly girl, bold as brass, tough as nails, with a tender heart and a temper to match his, fierce and scared and proud. She haunts him. When he closes his eyes he sees her face, hears her voice in his dreams, and sometimes when he looks at Kathy he knows she sees her, too. It's like one of those horror movies, a house plagued by the spirits of those who died there; his body is the house, and Olivia is the ghost. Only now she has company; she's not the only ghost. There's a man there with her, a man whose face neither Elliot nor Kathy can picture. A man who's been hurt by this just as much as the rest of them.

 _What a mess,_ he thinks. From that day on he can't bring himself to touch Kathy, and she doesn't ask him to. They're falling apart, and they both know it.

IV.

Lewis is _there,_ in her home, and he's got a gun, and no one is coming to save her. That's the only thought in her head. She is, completely, alone. Brian won't come looking for her; Elliot might have, but he's long gone, and Brian knows that sometimes Liv runs away, and he learned a long time ago not to chase her. There's Nick, but he's not like Elliot. Nick wouldn't sit in his car outside and wait for her to flash her lights. She's got no family, few friends.

No one's coming to save her.

Lewis takes her away, she doesn't know where. She struggles, he rips her shirt. He sees the Marine Corps symbol on her arm, sees the silvery sheen of her mark, and laughs in her face.

 _So you've got a man,_ he says. She doesn't answer.

 _That's good,_ he says. She doesn't answer.

_He's gonna see every mark I leave on you, and there's nothing he can do to stop it._

She spits in his face and he smacks her hard across the mouth.

No one's coming to save her.

V.

Elliot sits bolt upright in bed, breathing like he's just run a marathon. He feels...terrified. He feels like the world is ending. Maybe it was only a dream, but he doesn't remember it, no images, no sense of action. All that's left is this great, towering fear.

It's a fear so big Kathy feels it; beside him she groans, reaches for the light. When he scrubs his hands over his face he's shocked to find that he's sweating, and Kathy is watching him with worry in her eyes. Her gaze rakes over him, and stutters to a halt when she sees his chest.

 _Holy shit,_ she says. Kathy doesn't swear; she just doesn't. Elliot looks down, alarmed, and sees it then. The perfect round silvery marks on his chest. He spent too long working SVU not to recognize a cigarette burn when he sees it. There are other marks; his wrists are ringed with lines like someone's tied him up and he's struggled against the bonds, and there's long, silvery marks over his belly he can't identify.

 _What's happened to her?_ Kathy asks, horrified to be confronted by such violence in her own bed, and it's only then that the truth hits him. This is why he woke up scared, drenched in sweat. It wasn't his fear, it was _hers._ He knows it; he can feel it. They share the same heart, and that heart is full of terror. _Olivia_. Olivia is out there, somewhere, and someone is doing horrible things to her, and he is lying in bed with the wife he stopped love the way he ought to years before. Olivia is alone, because he left her there. Olivia is _hurt,_ because he walked away from her.

 _Go,_ Kathy says, pushing at him. His mind is spinning, his chest is tight, he can't breathe, can't understand what she's trying to tell him.

 _Go!_ She says again, louder this time, and that shakes his mind loose.

 _Kathy,_ he starts to apologize, but she won't hear it. She's staring at his chest, tears in the corners of her eyes like she can feel it, too, the guilt, the horror, the realization that maybe if he hadn't left Liv whatever's happening now never would have come to pass. Like maybe it's their fault, for leaving her behind.

 _She needs you,_ Kathy tells him. _And I need to move on. Go, Elliot. Go save her._

In the next breath he's on his feet, and running.

VI.

When he goes running into SVU he expects to see some familiar faces, but he doesn't. No Fin, no Cragen, just two young detectives standing by Liv's desk - at least, he hopes it's still her desk, he doesn't actually know - and his fear and his anger are both so strong he can't tell one from the other.

 _Detective Benson,_ he yells at the pair of them, _where is she?_

 _Why do you want to know?_ The woman answers him. Her voice is a challenge, and the man beside her has a dark look on his face like he wants to tackle Elliot to the ground. There isn't time for this, these fucking power plays, the mind games, the interrogation techniques; he has to find her. He has to save her. _Christ,_ if she dies now, dies because he abandoned her, he'll never be able to live with himself. If she dies, he will, too.

So he takes a risk.

 _Why do I want to know?_ He snarls at her. _Lemme ask you this,_ he says, and he's already rolling up his sleeve, _you ever see her arms?_

If he's gone then she's got no reason to hide the tattoos any more. If he's gone, she doesn't have to pretend like he doesn't exist. They've both grown up, changed, accepted who they are, what they mean to each other, what they'll never have. The man still looks like he wants to kick Elliot's ass right there in the bullpen but there's understanding dawning in the woman's eyes.

 _Yeah,_ she says. She's seen the marks. She knows Olivia's got a man, and she knows how to identify him.

 _This look familiar to you?_ Elliot asks, shoving his forearm right in front of her face.

 _You're him,_ she says. _Him._ The one who loved her. The one who left her. The one whose marks are etched on her skin forever. This woman, she takes one look at Elliot's arm, and she knows he's in love with Olivia, and that whatever's brought him here, it can't be good.

 _I am,_ he says. He's got the scars to prove it. _Wherever she is, she's hurt bad, and we gotta find her._

VII.

Cragen turns up, and the truth comes out. Everybody knows, now. They know Elliot was her partner and her soulmate. They know he loves her. And when they examine his body they know how bad she's hurt. New marks keep popping up while they scramble to track her down. At one point Brian Cassidy walks into the bullpen, takes one look at Elliot, turns white as a sheet, and then walks away. This feels more like a horror movie than ever, Elliot thinks. All the ghosts are gonna come walking before this thing is through.

They work it out, in the end. They've got an address, and no one questions Elliot's presence on the team. He's not a cop, and he doesn't have a gun, and by rights he shouldn't be there, but her marks are on his skin, and there's rage in his eyes, and no one there is going to tell him he has to leave her behind. Never again.

VIII.

No one's coming to save her, so Liv does what she's always done. She saves herself. Her hands are bound to the bed frame but the bed is old, and she manages to wrench one of the bars free. When she hits him with it, it feels good. It feels righteous.

 _You got anger issues,_ Lewis says around a mouthful of blood, lying on the floor. _Your Marine rubbing off on you?_

She hits him again.

IX.

Elliot's the first through the door. No gun, no vest, no hesitation, he races ahead of everyone else, and he's the first one to see her. Bruised, bloody, holding some kind of pipe or something in her hands, her eyes are wild and there's a mangled mass of flesh at her feet that vaguely resembles a man. The man who did this to her.

The team is at his back, and he can feel them stutter to a halt. They've never seen Liv like this, vulnerable but violent, her clothes ripped, her hair a mess, blood on her face. They don't know what to do; she's dangerous as long as she's holding a weapon. She's a victim, now, and that makes her unpredictable. They don't wanna scare her. Elliot doesn't give a shit; he's come all this way, and he's got to touch her.

 _Liv,_ he says, and his voice cracks, and the sound of her name coming from his lips makes her shudder like he's struck her.

 _I hit him,_ she says. Elliot recognizes that tone of voice; it's shock. She's in shock, she's not even really there. Her eyes look straight through him, empty, and the bastard on the floor did this to her, and Elliot feels his own hear shatter at the thought. All the times he's imagined seeing her again, he never imagined anything like this, and he wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to crush her against his chest, wants to strangle the man at her feet with his own two hands.

 _I can see that,_ he says, and walks slowly towards her. The rest of the team backs off, gives them some room. They know what Elliot and Olivia mean to each other; they know he's the only one who can get through to her. _You saved yourself,_ he says, his hands outstretched, a sign that he means no harm. _That's my girl._

There's a look in her eyes like maybe she thinks she's lost her mind, like maybe she thinks he's not really there. Like maybe she's seen a ghost.

 _I told him,_ she says, and her voice is inching towards hysterical, tears in her eyes, her grip on that pipe so tight her knuckles have gone white. _I told him about you. I told him you'd break his face._

 _Looks like you beat me to it, sweetheart,_ he says.

She starts crying in earnest then, and he lunges for her, catches the pipe in one hand and Liv in the other, and hauls her hard against his chest. She's warm and soft and _alive,_ and her blood is drying tacky on her skin. Somehow, she's come through this. After the hell she's been through in this place, she'll never be the same, and they both know it. Elliot will carry the guilt over this for the rest of his life. But she's still breathing, and as long as she's breathing there's a chance that she'll be made whole, one day. It won't be the same, but maybe, he thinks, maybe it'll still be ok. Maybe she'll let him love her, this time. Maybe they'll find their way. All he knows for certain is that he's never, ever gonna leave her again.

The body on the floor at his feet stirs and Elliot doesn't think. There's no time for thought, for working his way through the problem, seeing all the different angles. There's a gun on the floor and that bastard has tortured Elliot's girl and he's _moving._ Elliot's got one hand wrapped around the bar Liv used to beat the shit out of the guy, and he knows what he's gonna do before he does it.

 _Close your eyes,_ he says, and she does, and he takes that fucking pipe, and he strikes. Twice, hard, across the bastard's head. That's all it takes. Lewis goes limp, and he's not breathing any more. There's yelling coming from somewhere; the other cops heard it, and they come rushing in just in time to see Elliot drop the pipe.

 _He had a gun,_ Elliot says. It's a lie, but the gun is still on the floor, and no one can prove Elliot's lying. Olivia's eyes flicker open, and Elliot can see it, then. She knows what he's done.

He's finished the job.

X.

When Olivia wakes up the first thing she thinks is that everything hurts. From her hairline to her toes, she's radiating pain. There will be scars on her body for the rest of her life now, not the silvery marks of Elliot's love but the angry red welts of hate, and tears of rage gather in the corners of her eyes. She feels weak, and shattered. She feels like she wants to throw something.

But she's in a hospital bed, and her body's too weak to give vent to her rage. A scream bubbles up in the back of her throat but before she can release it a hand grabs hers, hard, and when she turns her head to look Elliot is there beside her.

When he found her in that house she thought she was dreaming. She thought Lewis had taken the last of her sanity from her, that she'd finally snapped, conjured the image of the man she loves to comfort her in her final moments. Only he's here, now, and he's looking at her like he wants to draw her inside of his chest and never let her out again. She wants that, too.

She knows why he left. He left because she told him to, because she wasn't ready. But every minute of every day, from that day to this, she has missed him, dreamed of him, hated herself for pushing him away. So many times she's thought of reaching out to him, only to remind herself that he'd made his choice, and she'd chosen to respect it.

Only now, now he's made another choice. He's chosen her. What it means, what his situation is with Kathy, what will happen tomorrow, Olivia doesn't know, but he's here with her, now. He's not a ghost, a figment of her imagination. He's _here._

 _You came,_ she says, and Elliot shifts, lays his forearm next to hers so their tats are side by side.

 _Look at this, Liv,_ he says. _Look at this. It was always you and me. It was always us. And I will always come for you._

She can only close her eyes, and pray that what he says is true. She can't lose him again.

XI.

The day the divorce is final Olivia moves in with him. It's been a long road; she's dealing with PTSD from the attack, prone to tantrums, rage bubbling up out of her at the most unexpected times. She cuts her hair, she jumps when he touches her. But the days pass, and she starts seeing a shrink, and one day she lets him kiss her, and doesn't pull away.

They'll have Eli every other week, so they get themselves a two bedroom apartment, and Elliot lets Liv decorate the room Eli will sleep in. Kathy's seeing someone; she hasn't told him, but Elliot suspects she's finally found _him._ He hopes so, at least. Kathy deserves some happiness, too.

Because _Christ,_ he is so happy. Lewis died but Elliot pleads self defense and everyone knows it's horseshit but no one wants to deal with the fallout, and miraculously, there's no trial. Liv finds her way back to herself, and the first time he sinks himself inside her there are tears in her eyes, but he knows it's only because she's _happy,_ relieved, at peace. He knows it because he is, too. They share the same heart, and that heart is finally whole.

They can't work together like this but it's been years since they worked together, anyway. The academy is the right place for him. The NYPD won't take him back as a detective after Lewis - the whispers follow wherever he goes, that he beat a man to death as revenge for the woman he loves. In his heart he thinks that's only half true. Liv did most of the work; he just finished the job. Still, though, he knows that makes him damaged goods, and he accepts his fate. Besides, the instructing job gives him regular hours, and that means he can do what he's tried to do from the day he was seventeen; he can build a _life._ There's baseball games and college graduations to go to, Kathy's wedding, eventually, then Maureen's. Someone has to keep Liv fed; she's never been any good at it.

An opportunity comes up when Liv encounters a damage little boy named Noah, and Elliot doesn't hesitate. They've had fun, getting to know his older kids all over again as they turn into adults, keeping Eli every other week, but Liv's always wanted a baby of her own, and he's wasted too much time and now he can't give her one. But they can take this one, and they do. _Their_ son, not just his, a little boy they love more than their own lives. Kathy's his godmother.

It's been a long road to get them to this point. They've fought like hell; fought each other, fought the perps, fought the passage of time, fought the mark. They still fight, sometimes, but now when they fight they always go tumbling into bed, after. It feels _right,_ and for once Elliot _knows_ he's made the right choice.

It's her; it's always been her.

The ghosts are quiet, and their hearts are full, and Liv doesn't cover the marks on her arms ever again. He can't ask for anything more; he's got everything he ever wanted, and so does she.


End file.
